Ken Mansfield wasn’t the fifth Beatle. He was more like the seventh or eighth.
As a suit for Capitol Records, he worked with the band on its American tours, and then was tapped by Paul McCartney to head U.S. business management for the group’s own division, Apple Records, in 1968.
Mansfield, 71, knew the group as it collapsed. In January 1969, he sat with Yoko Ono on top of a London rooftop for their last concert.
Now a born-again Christian, Mansfield plans to visit Calvary Fellowship in Mountlake Terrace, and then appear at a 40th anniversary re-creation of the rooftop concert in Seattle.
We called him at his home in the Sierra Nevada mountains outside Modesto, Calif., interrupting his work on a third memoir, to talk about the Beatles, losing a fortune and finding God.
Q: When you started working with the Beatles, you thought their popularity would fade. At what point did it click, that you had witnessed music history?
A: About 20 years later. That may sound like a flippant response, but it just kept going on and on forever, and the further I got away from it, it wasn’t getting smaller. It was becoming more incredible.
Q: There’s something magical about the Beatles’ rooftop concert. What stands out for you about it? A: It was a very trying time for the Beatles. To see them, when they walked out and started singing on the roof that day, to put all that behind them, you could tell they just realized who they were and they became a band again. … It was almost like you were watching an intimate moment between friends.
Q: Paul McCartney was largely responsible for hiring you at Apple Records. Do you guys still talk?
A: I’m not in the business anymore, and we don’t have each others number anymore. Ringo (Starr) and I are more in touch because we’ve shared the same attorney over the years, and he lives in California.
Q: What do you attribute the group’s break-up to? A: A lot of people say Yoko broke up the Beatles, but I say they give her way too much credit.… They were getting married and starting to have families, and their individual musical tastes were starting to differ a bit; and then they had the pressure of this company, which just became awful for them in some ways. I think it was really just a matter of evolution.
Q: After you went broke in the 1980s, you moved to Nashville with a few suitcases and boxes. How did you lose it all?
A: You think the big bucks are going to come in forever and you stop taking care of business and getting really decadent. The sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll aspect of it. You start making bad decisions and lose your focus. It’s a spiral downward. It’s so typical.
Q: How much did you lose?
A: I don’t know. It’d be a fortune.
Q: In Nashville, you found God, something you cover in your book “The Beatles, the Bible and Bodega Bay.” Will you be covering that at Calvary Fellowship?
A: I’m going to talk about hitting bottom and at that point, just becoming born again, because God brings you to that point where you realize what’s important. That’s my testimony.
Andy Rathbun
arathbun@heraldnet.com
Meet Ken Mansfield
7 p.m. Wednesday, speaking event, Calvary Fellowship Auditorium, 23302 56th Ave. W., Mountlake Terrace, free, www.calvaryfellowship.org, 425-775-3422
Noon Friday, rooftop re-creation concert with Beatles cover band Creme Tangerine, Copacabana Cafe balcony, 15201/2 Pike Place, Seattle; free; www.cremetangerine.com.
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